Uninstalling Vista, Reinstalling XP

[brent.obrien]

Please Help!

I have just bought an Acer Aspire 5315, 1.73Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb HDD etc.
It came with an "80Gb" HDD but they have sectioned off a partition for vista home basic recovery.
To put my problem very simply i want to get rid of Vista because it is absolutly ****. It wont let me install certain games, and wont let me network with my XP desktop.
I have tried to simply reformat the drive with my XP disc, but everytime i try it tells me there is no HDD to install it onto... that is my main problem.

Can someone PLEASE help me out, i have just got this laptop n am very eager to use it.

Thank you.

Add my msn if that would b easier for you to help. I am on almost al the time.
Brent.

 

[brent.obrien]

[email protected] is the addy if anyone needs to contact me

 

[AngelfireUk83]

The reason why XP set-up can't find a HDD is because it's needing a driver during the set-up process via floppy disk. As soon as it hits the blue screen and starts to load the disk you should see a sentence saying "For third Party Driver Support Press F6".

That is what you need to do so you can load up a driver but you need a floppy disc drive and not many PC's come with them now.

I found this little guide from someone who is trying the same thing http://soulpass.com/2007/11/10/inst...essional-sp2-on-acer-aspire-5315-2153-laptop/

Here you will find the latest version to what I think is the corret driver to use via floppy http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...All&OSFullName=All Operating Systems&lang=eng you will need a USB floppy drive thou.

Follow the guide or in short select this driver from the floppy "Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH8M-E/M)" and once it's loaded it your HDD should be seen and you can erase all partitions and have a nice speedy XP machine.

 

[TheCheat]

Uhm, you know... i have the same problem with my IBM lappy, but I just turn the HD mode to "Compatability" in the BIOS and it fixes the "HD Not Found" problem.

 

[conway]

Yeah, you either need the ahci driver for your motherboard, or if your bios supports it, switch your sata to ide or compatibility mode so you won't need the driver. Personally, I'd try to track down the ahci driver for improved performance and ncq(if supported by your drive), but then you'll need to slipstream it(nlite) into your xp cd or get a usb floppy, because I'm guessing your laptop has no floppy drive.

 

[corruption]

One of the easiest things you can do to get around this is to try the following:

1. Download and install nLite.
2. Download the sata drivers from Acer's website for your laptop...if you can't find them, go to the chipset manufacturer's website and get them there.
3. Copy everything from your XP installation CD to a folder on your desktop labeled "XP."
4. Start up nLite and slipstream the sata drivers. (Be sure that you select the option to burn a bootable disk.....nLite can now do all that for you. It may need Nero to be installed in order to do this, but you can use a demo version for this purpose.)
5. After it finishes burning, boot off of the disk and install XP. Voila!

I've used this method on a few new laptops that people have purchased and requested that XP be installed on it rather than Vista. You may also want to download the network drivers and slipstream them too. That way you can be sure that it will connect to the net so that you can get the rest of your drivers loaded. (Don't forget to label your new XP disk so that you'll be able to locate it later on if needed. There's nothing worse than trying a few disks and finding that the last one in the pile is the one that you needed.....Some of my disks are setup so that I don't have to input any information, so they are basically tailored to one individual PC.)

Hope this helps.

 

[brent.obrien]

Thanks

Thanks guys, ive got XP on here now and all of my original problems are fixed, games run fine, networking is better.
but the sound drivers that i was told to use didnt work, they install fine and says that the audio should be working but its not. everytime i try and play something in media player i get..... "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There may not be a sound device installed on your computer, it may be in use by another program, or it may not be functioning properly."

If anyone knows where the drivers for this model are it would be much appreciated, i will keep looking myself also

 

[TheCheat]

Try this: Go to Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware Tab>Device Manager>Find your sound card under "Sound,Video and game controllers." Go to its Properties, and select the Driver Tab. Click Uninstall.

Download this: (if you haven't already) http://www.acerpanam.com/flex/acerdrivers/bin/drivers.html?CFID=5189808&CFTOKEN=67757695

Go back to control panel and double click Add Hardware. Let windows guide you through it, and be sure to specify to look in the folder that drivers are in. It'll install on its own and probably require a restart.

Thats how I installed my onboard sound. Hope that helps.

 

[brent.obrien]

anyone know about a virus that uninstalls sound drivers? i got my soudn drivers working for ages but now they have somehow uninstalled them selves and i cant play games because it says the drivers arent installed, but i can play music all the same...